The Virginia Belle- A Halloween story for Jantojones
by MLaw
Summary: While returning from Washington Kuryakin and Waverly come under attack by THRUSH and seek cover in a derelict train yard. Written for the Halloween Challenge in Scrapbook, Live Journal. The photo prompt was a rusted train engine and passenger car from the late 1800's.


They were returning from a meeting just outside of Washington D.C. with Alexander Waverly seated in the rear seat of his sedan, accompanied by Agent Peter Lynch, his driver and Illya Kuryakin who'd pulled escort duty for this excursion.

They were returning to New York when all hell broke loose; shots were fired upon the vehicle killing Lynch as the vehicle crashed head on into a telephone pole.

The Russian returned fire, shoving Waverly down to the floor of the back seat, though the Old Man had already drawn his own gun and was more than willing to join the firefight.

There were too many of them and Illya decided they were sitting ducks if they remained in the car. He opened his door, using it for cover as he got to Waverly.

He pulled the man out, and shielding him with his body Kuryakin backed his boss around the corner.

"That way sir, go!" The Russian barked.

Waverly understood the seriousness of the situation and listened to his top agent. Still he pulled his communicator to report the situation while Illya, having taking the Old Man's weapon, was firing now with two guns.

Bullets were flying as Kuryakin continued to shoot with deadly accuracy, but there were still too many.

"Channel D-Emergency," Waverly called." We were ambushed and are taking on gunfire. Lock onto my signal and get help here at once! Agent Lynch is dead and Mr. Kuryakin and I are being pursued on foot."

"Yes sir, I'm triangulating your signal now. Keep your comm open," Napoleon Solo calmly responded, although his stomach was tied up in knots.

He was still at the UNCLE field office located in Washington D.C. tying up some loose ends. He wasn't happy about not having accompanied Mr. Waverly, but the Old Man insisted everything would be fine

For the moment Illya's shooting was keeping their pursuers at bay, that was until Kuryakin took a hit to his right shoulder. He spun as the bullet struck, sending spiralling him down to the ground.

Waverly, still being hale for a man his age, took up his gun again, getting off a few shots while he helped Illya to his feet.

Hanging onto his agent, Alexander Waverly now led the way; in the distance there was what looked like an abandoned railway yard. He headed towards it in hopes of disappearing there until help arrived.

The place was seemingly a city of the dead, per se. Cemeteries were haunting, melancholy places, but this was not a human place of rest, it seemed to be a graveyard for trains.

It was full of old passenger and freight cars as well as locomotive engines including a few of the steam variety, left there to rust from the ravages of time and the weather.

The skeletons of many of these once mighty vehicles were falling to pieces. Yet they were strangely beautiful, in such an eerily quiet place.

There was one particular engine, with a passenger car still connected to it, and though decrepit, pitted and stained with rust, it still had an aura of its grandeur and glory from another era. There was a faded name on its side, 'The Virginia Belle.'

Waverly quickly helped Kuryakin up the steps and into the passenger car, lowering him onto a tattered green settee.

There were furnishings still there, faded and threadbare, but still hinted from their former beauty. The style looked as though it were from the last century.

There was no more sounds of gunfire, giving Waverly hope they'd lost their attackers at least long enough for help to arrive.

"Mr. Solo are you still there?" He pulled his communicator from his breast pocket.

"Yes sir, help is on the way."

"Please, with all alacrity?"

"We're trying, but traffic is heavy on the beltway at the moment. Are you injured sir?

"I'm fine but Mr. Kuryakin has been wounded. Why the devil aren't you sending a helicopter?"

"All air traffic within the Capital had been grounded as the President is preparing to fly to his house in Atoka.

Apparently there's been some sort of delay at the White House, but in the meantime the sky must remain clear until Army One departs and arrives at the Kennedy home."

"Dammit man, I don't care what you have to do to get here, just do it and with all haste!" Waverly laid his communicator down atop an old end table, focusing his attention on his Russian agent.

"Hang in there young man, help is on the way." He applied pressure, using his handkerchief to staunch the bleeding, though it was doing little good.

Kuryakin's white shirt bore a large blossom of blood and was slowly spreading while he was fading in and out of consciousness.

Illya opened his eyes, blinking a few times to focus. What he saw surely had to be a dream.

There was the figure of a woman standing over him. She was pale, beautiful in a sad sort of way.

Her blonde hair fell down in long ringlets about her shoulders. She was dressed in a voluptuous pink silken gown, with a full hoop skirt that made a rustling sound when she moved.

"Oh Ashley mah darlin' I've finally found you!"

"Who?" He replied, though his voice was a bit hoarse.

"I've been waiting for you my beloved. I know you didn't mean to cheat on me with that white trash Charlotte Beauregard… but now we can be together, finally."

"Madam my name is Illya not Ashley and I know no woman named Charlotte."

"Liar, you filthy liar. I saw you with her!" The woman's demeanor changed. Her eyes became a glowing red, and her body became vaporous. Her mouth opened like a gaping dark maw filled with gleaming white teeth that resembled fangs.

In the blink of an eye, she calmed, looking once again like a demure southern belle."Mah goodness, now here you've gotten me madder than a wet hen. No, that doesn't matter now, does it? We'll be together for eternity Ashley."

She raised her right hand above her head, and in it was a dagger, its blade gleaming in the light and dripping with blood. Yet she and the weapon suddenly became transparent, like an apparition.

As she solidified, she drove the blade downwards and Illya pushed himself off the settee to the richly carpeted floor, narrowly missing the blade. He could feel movement beneath him, and heard the clickety-clack of a train rolling along its tracks.

"I am not your Ashley! Who the devil are you? Where are we?" Illya scuttled backward across the floor like a crab, realizing in the process that not only was he no longer wounded, and he wasn't dressed in his black suit.

He was wearing a pair of tight grey britches, a flowing white shirt, black leather gloves and high black leather boots. It was as if he were costumed out of something from the Confederate period in the United States.

"Don't you know me my beloved? I'm your one and only. I'm your betrothed."

"Madam I do not know you. As I said my name is Illya, Illya Kuryakin. I am not this Ashley fellow, I assure you."

Her voice became sing songy as she hummed an unfamiliar melody. "You are he, you're my Ashley and now you have to come along with me. Don't give me any of more of your sass. I've forgiven you Ashley and that should be enough."

"I think not!" Illya answered.

The fanged filled maw returned and she dove at Kuryakin; he tried grabbing her wrists to fight her off, but his hands went right through her. He struggled to free himself but it was too late. The woman landed right on top of him, and drove the dagger deep into Illya's shoulder; he cried out in pain.

How could it be so, this woman couldn't be she seemed to be a spectre instead of a living, breathing human being, yet she was solid enough to attack him? Why was he suddenly in this train that looked new, when he knew it to be old and falling apart? Too many questions as he felt himself weakening. Was he dying, he asked himself.

The final and most important question...where was Mr. Waverly? Was it the Old Man's blood on the knife?

If there was a heaven or a hell, perhaps these questions would be answered soon enough or if there were no such places, Kuryakin was ready to resign himself into the blackness of nothingness of eternity.

Illya's one regret was not being able to say goodbye to Napoleon, his only true friend...no, his brother.

This was it, he realized as his vision was fading; he was dying at the hand of some mad creature, perhaps created by THRUSH. Kuryakin couldn't rationalize the existence of ghosts.

This was insanity, or maybe it was he who had lost his mind?

.

"Illya, wake up. Come on tovarisch!" Solo gently slapped his partner's face several times.

Kuryakin's eyes opened. "Na-Napoleon? Where is that woman?"

"What woman?"

"She was dressed oddly in an old fashioned gown...it was she who stabbed me, insisting I had betrayed her."

"Sounds like you had a bit of an hallucination, probably due to blood loss. You'll be all right. We have an ambulance outside to transport you to a hospital."Solo cradled his partner until the medical personnel arrived with a stretcher.

"Mr. Waverly?" Illya asked.

"Is fine, he's already on his way to New York with double the Security team. I wished you'd waited for me to go with you on this trip."

"Me too," Kuryakin closed his eyes, drifting off as he was lifted onto the gurney.

He awoke the next day after a successful surgery to remove the slug in his shoulder. Kuryakin was feeling out of sorts, being troubled by the strange visions he'd experienced while he and Mr. Waverly had sought cover in the derelict train yard.

Napoleon walked into his partner's hospital room carrying a small paper sack.

"Sorry I wasn't here when you woke up," he set the bag on the bed table. "How you feeling?"

"Sore, and troubled. There was strange vision that I experienced, though surely it was delirium; it seemed so real."

"You said something about it before you passed out yesterday which led me do a little snooping around. Apparently the train on which you and Mr. Waverly took refuge is supposedly haunted."

"Haunted? You know Napoleon I do not believe is such nonsense."

"Well I'm only repeating what I was told by the old fellow who's been the watchman at the train yard for the last fifty or so odd years. He said that train was once privately owned and known called the 'Virginia Belle.' It belonged to a wealthy family by the name of Randolph, just prior to the Civil War. It seems their eldest daughter, Savannah Rose, was jilted by her finacé who she caught in the arms of another woman. Savannah supposedly went mad and murdered her betrothed, stabbing him to death on that very train. She then killed herself with the same knife with which she murdered him."

"Let me guess, his name was Ashley," Illya snickered, not believing his partner's story.

"As a matter of fact it was. He was Ashley Fitzhugh, a member of another elite Virginia family. It seems that the spirit of Miss Randolph has made several appearance to people using that private train car after the war. It was finally scuttled after people refused to use it because of the haunting. The engine and the passenger car were both left to disintegrate in that train graveyard."

"You are making this up," Illya tried crossing his arms in front of his chest, and winced as he forgot his right arm was in a sling.

"Maybe you'll believe this tovarisch." Napoleon drew something from the paper sack. It was a bloody dagger." Look familiar?"

"Sort of."

"It was found in that passenger car. We had the lab test it and that's your blood on the blade, but Illya you had no knife wound, only the wound from being shot. There was also this."

Napoleon held up a ragged shirt that looked as though it had once been white. It was very old and seemed nearly ready to disintegrate from dry rot. There was a darkened stain on it.

"That looks like blood," Illya said.

"Correct you are my dear Kuryakin. The lab said the cloth is at least a hundred years old, the blood stain is too...but here's the kicker, it's a match for your blood, so is the blood on the blade."

The Russian was dumbfounded. How was that possible? A knife born by a ghostly figure with his blood on the blade and on this aged piece of cloth?

"Now do you believe in ghosts, tovarisch?"

After a few minutes the silence was broken and Illya finally spoke, but ignored his partner's question.

"Napoleon would you please ask the nurse to bring me something?"

"What do you need?"

"Something to make me sleep."

Solo's eyes widened with surprise. Illya avoided that sort of medication. Pretty much all agents did as well.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes, I just want to sleep and forget about my ghastly ordeal…"

"You mean ghostly,"

"You call it what you wish Napoleon, and I will do the same."


End file.
